Slashdot Mirror
BT Loses Case Over Hyperlink Patent
Tarkie sent in this Bloomberg blurb noting that British Telecom has lost their patent suit against Prodigy over an old patent that BT hoped would cover the use of hyperlinks on the modern WWW. See our original story or check out the court's decision.
I think anyone sensible who saw their claims shook his head in wry humor.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
Note that the opinion does not invalidate the patent. Rather, it says that Prodigy (and the Internet writ large) do not infringe the patent because the Internet does not have a "central computer" or contain "blocks of information" as the court defined them and the patent requires.
Not only did they lose but they lost on Summary Judgement. Basically a SJ motion happens midway through the case when one of the sides moves for the judge to rule in their favor. In essence they are saying that the other side has nothing. It occurs in almost every case and is rarely granted in whole (typically it will make smaller parts of the case go away). But to lose it all on SJ means that they really did have squat, and that there was no point in continuing on. Cool.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
I never tought that such a thing would be possible, but the court decision is actually a good read.
If I understand correctly, BT's patent describes an old system whereby `continuous blocks of information' stored in a databased on a central `system' can be accessed remotely via telephone lines. The interface allows for accessing the data on the system by chunks. The users somehow selects a menu or a link when they want to access the next bit.
The court comprehensively dismissed all parts of BT's infringement claims.First the Internet is not a central system, second a central database is not accessed (the judge writes that the Internet is in fact the very antithesis of a central database), next the data on the Internet is not in the form of blocks: HTML is far more flexible than what the BT patent describes, and finally the concept of hyperlink is far more advanced than what BT described in its patent (basically a `give me the next bit' button).
At some point during the trial, BT's expert tried to submit made up web pages that conformed to what the BT patent was describing. The judge found that totally unconvincing, writing `a device does not infringe because it can be made to infringe'.
In conclusion, the jugde writes `In contrast to what BT would have us believe, there are no disputed issues of material fact in this case'.
Let's hear it for the court today.
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm &r=1&f=G&l=50&s1='4,873,662'.WKU.&OS=PN/4,873,662& RS=PN/4,873,662
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
In effect, this is exactly what happened. If you read the judgement right through, you'll see that 'central computer', 'blocks of data' etc. were made to have very narrow, specific meanings by BT, in an attempt to get the patent granted in the first place, despite the wealth of prior art.
Crucially, BT limited 'complete address' during their patent application to specifically include the track and sector on the disk where the next page should come from, because 'virtual addresses' (using filenames or other additional 'lookup data') had already been described and used elsewhere.
Without being able to show infringement of this and other features, they didn't stand a chance. Of course, the lawyers made a bunch of $$$, and we all pay for that somewhere...
Actually, the judge did mention several additional levels of translation required. He mentioned that the web server needs to resolve the relative address in the the URL into a local address by looking up the base directory in a configuration file, and then needs to ask the OS to find the actual physical track and sector where the file is located. (Apparently the BT people specifically said that a complete address would have to include track and sector information!) He didn't even get into the idea that in many cases the data sent out isn't even a file at all, but is generated dynamically by the server.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
No, he does understand what a server is, and that is a sort of center. He also understands that not all servers are the same 'center' due to the internet being, by design, a thing no single center.
He also notes that BT carefully narrowed their definitions to avoid prior art, but this narrowing also narrowed their claim out of validity.
Read the decision PDF more carefully. The judge did understand what a "server" is (well enough anyway) and he did not find against BT because their claims were slightly too narrow but because they covered something entirely different.
With respect to the "remote terminals" connected to a "central computer" part of the judgement he allowed that having a bunch of "hub and spoke" networks that were connected in some way would infringe, but also noted (correctly) that the internet is nothing at all like this. Any "remote terminal" can retrieve information from any server, so no server qualifies as a "central computer" with respect to any group of "remote terminals".
Centralized strorage was a crucial part of the BT patent. Decentralized strorage is the defining characteristic of the internet. There is no way to read the BT patent broadly enough that it includes the internet without also including prior art.
BTW - there is no reason why the BT patent should be thrown out. They have a right to hold a patent over the technology that they developed. They do not have a right to claim everything that looks vaguely like the technology that they developed. The judge correctly found that their patent does cover something, it just doesn't cover the internet.
It happens almost automatically in UK court cases that the loser pays the winner's costs. Especially when summary judgement has been given.